Dogs rescued from South Korean meat farm arrive in RI

(WPRI) – A group of canines rescued from the dog meat trade in South Korea arrived in Rhode Island Wednesday morning.

The four dogs are named Lee, Chicago, Vin and Violet, and they range in age from 7 months to a year old. After a long journey from South Korea to San Francisco to Boston, they were finally transported to the Potter League for Animals in Middletown.

The dogs came from a meat farm near Pyeongchang, which was shut down as humane groups seek to raise awareness of the poor conditions in those types of facilities.

The push to rescue the dogs gained international attention during the recent Winter Olympics, when athletes paid a visit to the farms and started speaking out about the dog meat trade.

It’s legal in South Korea to kill dogs for meat, and that would’ve been the fate for these four had they not been rescued.

“They were not going to have lives to live,” Potter League for Animals Executive Director Brad Shear said. “So now we know that we can get them into a home and they can live normal lives.”

“They already seem like normal dogs,” he continued. “If you see these dogs walking down the street in Newport, you’re not going to pick them out and say, ‘there’s the Korean dog that was gonna be meat.’ They’re just going to be dogs like any other dog and to just give them a normal life is really satisfying for everybody involved here.”

Under state law, the dogs must be in isolation for at least five days before they can be put up for adoption. Shear said the Potter League is already starting to receive applications, which can be completed online.